Читать книгу Cimarrón Pedagogies - Lidia Marte - Страница 7

I dedicate this book to my mother, Silvia Angélica de la Cruz, for her fierce cimarrón commitment to learning and to her children’s education, and for migrating to the North so I could have access to a higher education that she could not obtain for herself. I am paying with this book a debt of gratitude to her irreverent attitude and her life-sustaining teachings. To my sister Silvia Argentina Marte, who picked up the task where my mother left it, who have continued taking care of my wellness where ever I happen to live, and now here in San Juan, Puerto Rico; for her delicious foods, moral support and the example of her strength and dignity even under the most un-auspicious circumstances. I also dedicate this book in memoriam to my beloved Brian Stross, for his anthropological teachings, his humor, love of food and music, for his commitment to social justice and for his unconditional friendship. This book is in part a response to Stross who (in different occasions and in different ways) asked me why I cared so much about teaching, and I could not answer him coherently at the time. Even though it is too late now for him to read this book, I feel at peace now with my answer.

With this book, I am paying a debt of gratitude also to my formal and informal teachers and mentors, who have taught me how to learn throughout my life. I am grateful for the tools they shared, which further individual and collective liberations, critical consciousness and radical imagination. I thank them for challenging me to recognize my power to produce small spaces of autonomy for myself and others, to re-invent a more dignified life and to represent and create archives of my own history. Thanks to Eugenio García Cuevas, who first exposed me in the 1980s to critical tools and political economy, and introduced me to the work of Aníbal Ponce, who has become, ever since, a model and avatar for my teaching. I dedicate also this book to an unsuspected mentor, to Jormiguita, for her twin flame friendship and for the jewel of her children’s stories, which I consume avidly. I am learning through her stories to teach without teaching, and to say so much with the sharp precision of less words. I dedicate lastly and in memoriam, to Christopher Heath, a dear friend, brilliant artist and photographer, who taught me to refine my graphic arts skills and to be in-place, through our long photo-walking routes through the shores and streets of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan.